


let the spotlight dim and the night recede

by monograph



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Explicit Language, Kissing, Late Night Conversations, Love Confessions, M/M, One Shot, Stream of Consciousness, Truth or Dare, ish, more like truth and truth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:49:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24837187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monograph/pseuds/monograph
Summary: A late night game of truth or truth. Exhaustion fueled revelations and a confession.Jisung had not expected this study session to go like this.
Relationships: Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know
Comments: 25
Kudos: 210





	let the spotlight dim and the night recede

**Author's Note:**

> This is the fruit of a late night frenzy to complete _something_ because the other fic that I am working on refuses to end and keeps growing and growing.

Yes, it is 2 A.M.

Yes, he has been drinking coffee nonstop since evening.

Yes, he’s sleep deprived and has been staring at his book for so long that his eyes can’t focus anymore.

Even though all of the above are true, he doesn’t know why his control is slipping like this. It is an ironclad mechanism, no deviations, no slip-ups. Yet, Jisung’s thoughts keep swirling around how it would feel like to caress the nape of Minho’s neck, about the warmth and softness of his lips and how his eyes beseech for sleep, their puffiness highlighted by the glow of the lamp.

“If I fail tomorrow and get kicked out of college,” Jisung says, more to clear his head than to make conversation, “and become a hermit in a far off hill, would you come visit me?”

Minho is looking at him. His eyes rove over his face, and Jisung blushes, drops his gaze to the book where words swim without any meaning to anchor them. This is not a part of the mechanism, he tells himself.

“Hermits are supposed to be reclusive,” Minho says and then, “but I’ll come visit you even if you’re a sham hermit.”

A lazy, treacherous warmth unfurls itself in his belly. It is not, unfortunately, acidity. Jisung curls his shoulders as if it would help in this situation. It doesn’t, it just makes the crick in his neck more obvious.

“Maybe I can convince you to become a hermit, too,” he says, still to clear his mind. Why does he do this when it only leads to Minho saying or doing something that makes Jisung’s heart spin?

Minho’s smile is a snare. A snare that he is willingly walking into, Jisung thinks. “Can’t leave you alone, now can I, Jisungie?”

There it is. The crux of the issue. If at first Jisung thought that Minho was hot and handsome, then those simpler terms have long since evaporated. He spends so much time with Minho that he knows that he has an incandescent heart, a mind sharp as a knife. He loves without any fear of drowning and is so kind that sometimes it seems that if you drew out his essence, it would be soft and orange, that it’ll lull you right to sleep. And he sees everything, and is painfully perceptive, brave in the search for what he wants. Why hasn’t he said anything, yet, Jisung doesn’t know and he dares not to take a step that disrupts the cobweb he’s cocooned himself in.

Minho is still grinning and how, pray tell, is Jisung supposed to stand a chance?

With his ironclad mechanism, of course. But it is out of order, the chains are loosening. Maintenance scheduled for whenever the hell Jisung goes to sleep.

Minho reaches forward and flips his book shut. Jisung startles. Minho closes his laptop. The glow of the lamp makes him look more ethereal than the harsh light of the laptop did. Minho doesn’t use blue light filters or blue light filtering glasses even though he is always on everyone’s case to use either one of them.

“Let’s play a game to get our minds off of our studies for a minute,” he says. He stretches his hand over his head. Jisung watches the tendons flex in his neck and wonders what it would feel like to kiss it.

“I’m up for it,” he says and for a moment he doesn’t know which question he is answering.

God, his head is but a cotton pod, tufts of static and the odd, harsh bump of thoughts that refuse to unfurl. He thinks vaguely of some scientific principle, but it doesn’t materialize in human language. Call his eyes sandbags, the amount of weight they are carrying. His mouth is dry, and he is teetering on the edge of tears like Wile E Coyote after Roadrunner pushes him off a cliff. When he’s suspended there, not quite realising what is happening. If he looks down, then boom. If Jisung looks down (at his book) once more then drip, drip of tears.

Minho grins. “Truth or Truth.” 

“Right,” Jisung says because he can’t think of any excuse to not play truth and truth (calling it twenty questions is so passe). He can’t say, “listen hyung, rain-check because I am so exhausted that I don’t think I can hide my pathetic crush anymore.”

“What is the first thing you would do if you do become a hermit? Hypothetically. Without the antecedent of you failing,” Minho says just when Jisung realises that ‘rain-check’ is a valid excuse and that Minho would agree because he always listens to him.

But. But. What if Jisung’s exhaustion is not just because of the endless fucking exams and the coffee and the sleeplessness. Side not: if sleep deprivation is a method of torture then why do colleges do things that make it impossible to not deprive you of sleep? Moving on. What if he is so tired that the loosening of the chains is just him wanting an answer, any answer – as much as it is fun to love Minho from far away, it has been going on for too long and it is starting to fester – any answer that would let him know what to do?

“Send you an invite,” he says with a smile he hopes is crooked and not demented.

Minho smacks his arm. Jisung sticks his tongue out, but obliges anyway, “I think I’ll just pick a tree and watch its movements throughout the day.”

Minho blinks and sucks his bottom lip in. Jisung looks away, but then looks back. Answer, answer. “Why,” Minho asks.

“I get a double round,” Jisung wags a finger. Ink-stained, pruned finger. “Because I like the way the tree moves in the wind,” he says, thinking of a farmhouse he went to once. “And it isn’t going anywhere, but it is doing so much.”

That roving look again. Minho's face creases in an oddly proud smile. Jisung doesn’t know what to make of it. “You always surprise me with the way you think,” Minho says.

Jisung is embarrassed again. His stomach quivers and his ears burn like the red hot tip of a cigarette. “It reminds me of you,” he blurts even as his frontal lobes are screaming at him, telling him, “shut up, dumbfuck.”

Minho stills. Everything stills. What does that mean? Jisung doesn’t know. He only knows that his mind is a black, blank, useless void. He thinks of the edgy painting he made once, black water colours on white printing paper. He used up all the black, couldn't make rain clouds after that. Minho’s eyes narrow. “Why.”

“You move like the wind when you’re dancing,” Jisung says because guess what, he has written the same in the second love letter out of the four addressed to Minho. But no Lara Jean moment for him because he writes on his laptop and his laptop is secured with a 12-character password and his fingerprint. “Because you’re always... there for me even when - especially when you’re going up in the world.”

“Jisung,” Minho murmurs, looking star struck. Or, is it constipated? How can Jisung know when he is sneaking glances and not actually studying his face.

“What did you think of me when you met me for the first time,” Jisung asks.

Minho opens his mouth and then closes it. He scoots closer, closer, until he’s right beside Jisung. Jisung stares at the space where Minho was instead of where he is.

“You were so quiet that I didn’t know what to make of you,” Minho chuckles. The rickety fan is blowing his hair into his neck. He has let his hair grow past his collar. “But you had such expressive brows that I could kinda tell what you were thinking.”

Something grabs hold of all of Jisung’s innards and pulls them down. He feels dizzy for a second. His heart is in his throat. “Can you still do that?”

It is pitch black outside, but it wouldn’t dare trespass into their apartment, the way they’ve lighted it. It feels like a spotlight with the unending darkness of night as their spectator. He feels like he’s under a spotlight. He’s blinded, but giddy (acidity? fear?). But hey, it’s a spotlight. Some attention, even as he shrinks and curls under the glare is nice.

“Yes.” A strong yes, then. Equivalent to a thousand people’s ayes, no?

Minho’s face is drawn and pale, but there's something twinkling there. Something not quite good for the ticking of Jisung’s body.

Sometimes, when he is especially exhausted, Jisung thinks of being five and being scared that the tooth monsters will take over his mouth because he didn’t brush properly. Now, he’s five cups of coffee in and has been surviving on ramyeon that drips with sodium for so many days that he is perhaps a sentient salt column. How things change. And now Minho’s fucking up his rhythm too. Five-year-old Jisung, no one gives a shit about your health anymore, buddy.

“What’s your favourite memory with me?” Minho’s voice is so soft, like he has sunk into this quagmire too, that he’s using the last ounces of breath to play along with Jisung’s quest. He folds his knee to his chest. He’s small like this, but not microscopic because even with his eyes closed Jisung can see him. His eyes are open now and all he can see is Minho. He is a dense presence in this shadow filled, airless room.

“When we went to get take out from that place a town over,” Jisung’s lips are dry, his skincare routine is in tatters, half forgotten. Hey, dermatologists be ready for when it's all over, he'll be coming with this skin that he has forgotten, with new lines he is not familiar with. “It started raining and your windshield wipers stopped working.”

“We sat in the car till the rain passed,” Minho murmurs.

Huddled into their jackets because the heat didn’t work either. Jisung was spitting mad, ready to eviscerate Minho and his shitty car, but Minho had ripped open one of the packages of food and offered it to him with a mischievous smile. Jisung had thought, “that’s hecking attractive.” Now here we are. “We sat and watched the rain. It was life in slow mode for an hour.”

“Slow mode, that’s a thing with you,” Minho observes. Of course he does.

Jisung takes the easy way out. “Do you believe in aliens?”

Minho frowns. Jisung doesn’t want him to frown, but done is done. He retracts into his thin, aching skin but doesn’t retract his question. The fan is still rattling away self-importantly. Jisung wants to use a catapult and knock it off with a stone. Never mind, he has never used a catapult.

“I don’t know,” Minho says and then because he toys with the rules and bends them like those who fidget with a piece of paper when bored, he says, “that day when I had a migraine and you spent the whole day with me. You were so gentle that I was kinda crying because of that rather than the pain.”

Oh shit, folks, this is dangerous territory, turn back!

“Now I am not scared of them because I know you’ll be there.”

The exhaustion has gotten to Minho, hasn’t it? Where are the jokes? Where’s the side-stepping of questions? Where’s the attempt to lighten the tension? Washed away, leaving Minho bare like the sand on a beach after a good rain.

There's silence and Jisung thinks that they’re both seizing up the situation, considering the stakes. The corner that Jisung had stuffed himself into in order to not get distracted while studying is sweltering. Jisung’s sweating. Multiple reasons. His scratchy sweatshirt is annoying.

Minho laces his hands on the front of his knees. “Do you like living with me? Elaborate.”

Jisung pushes himself out of the corner, crawls on hands and knees till he is in front of Minho. The fan’s air reaches him and it cools him even as his face burns and his hands tremble. “Yes,” he’s whispering too. This atmosphere is infectious, midnight madness.

“Elaborate.”

Jisung wants to say, “living with you is a dream come true.” He says, “living with you is amazing. You’re such a great guy and you’re the best roommate I’ve ever had.”

“Elaborate.” His eyes have an intensity that books would call smouldering, but Jisung knows it is the result of being half dead on the inside. That bone deep exhaustion that forces you to squint and frown because the world starts looking unreal after you’ve stayed up too long, put yourself through too much.

Error found: no mental filter. “Living with you is a dream come true. This is home.”

Minho unlaces his fingers and plays a game. He is stacking the tips of his fingers on top of each other, his fingers all angled and crooked. He breaks them apart and then repeats the process. Jisung is mesmerized.

“What do you think of me now?” Jisung asks.

Minho’s fingers are hypnotic to watch in their smooth, unbroken movements. That’s why Jisung notices the sudden freezing, the abrupt restarting of motion. “I’m very glad that you’re in my life. I am glad that we became friends because now I can’t imagine not having you annoy me all the time.” His words like marbles, all hurried and scattered.

Jisung knows where this is coming from. Everything, everything. They both go feral during exam time and hunker down and shut out the world for good chunks of time to study, to prepare for the ceaseless scrutiny that determines their worth with numbers given by someone else. They’ve been hissing and talking, and ranting about stupid-fucking-dumbass-classmates, and fucking horrendous study material, and this one subject that was forged in hell, and then eating together and taking breaks together, and sharing glances and sanity and bits of affection to keep floating.

“What do you think of me?” Minho asks.

It’s deteriorating the chains, the boundaries; the unspoken don’t look, you won’t see what you want to see, and the clam up and don’t let anything slip. It’s just been one slippery slope to this. Truth and truth.

Jisung breathes in through his mouth, air whistling as it fights past his teeth. “You’re something else.” He hesitates. “You mean a lot to me. Your kindness, your strength. The way you always look out for me.” Answer, answer. 

Minho’s stopped playing the game. He is sitting with his leg tucked under him, arms crossed. He’s beyond the reach of the lamp now and it casts soft shadows on his grave face.

Jisung needs a question. He thinks for a minute or so. “What’s your favourite memory from the past week?

“When we saw that cat that was out on a walk with a cute green harness.”

Jisung doesn’t know what to do. He knew at the beginning of the game, maybe, but doesn’t know what to do  _ now _ .This now is a viscous, dizzying wade through a path nettled with everything that scares Jisung. Jisung is lost, no innate sense of direction to lead him, not that he had any to begin with. How can he get answers, how does he answer in a way that gets him an answer?

“What will you do after exams end?”

Jisung doesn’t know what’s happening in this game of truth and truth, much less what’s going to happen after this game ends. What should he brace for? Humiliation or the knowledge that he came close, but skittered back scared by an onslaught. It is an onslaught, mind you, everything changing and undulating in the space of minutes, like how Minho is scooting ahead and he’s so close that Jisung can smell the gummy, smothered bad smell of his night cream and moisturiser.

“Go to sleep for years. I should change my name on the lease agreement to Rip van Winkle, actually.”

“No plans?”

“Nah, I just want to sleep.”

Minho is silent. The night is silent. The fan’s groaning and Jisung thinks everything is going to explode around his head. Minho’s nervous, Jisung can tell, for he’s chewing his lips. Jisung is nervous too. He’s sweating and his fingertips are numb.

“I had a plan,” Minho says and his voice cracks just a little, and Jisung cracks too because – because –

“The plan was grand, but I’m not sure I can wait that much,” Minho continues.

Jisung’s brain has finally interpreted the stimuli and tells him that yes, Minho does indeed have his hands on your thighs. “Are you going bowling?” Jisung asks as if Minho would look so wrecked and huge eyed and nervous to go roll a ball and knock some pins down. His lips are red after being subjected to so much gnashing.

Minho shakes his head to clear the air and Jisung shakes his sweatshirt in order to let in some air. “I-” again a shake of Minho’s head and the resultant flop of his hair. He pushes it back with a hand that has taken on the marks of the creases of his watch. Jisung misses that hand and its warmth.

Intoxicating. The soupy, simmering air in the room, the crackle of leaves outside the window, the endless reach of the night. Jisung is caught, frozen, at the mercy of the rushed beat of his heart that resonates everywhere and makes him heady with the blood it’s pumping to his head.

“Have you only spoken the truth all this while?” asks Minho and Jisung’s splintering and then coalescing and he thinks Minho is about to look down and bam!

“Yes,” Jisung manages to say after clenching at the word and dragging it out through his tight throat and numb mouth. “By the way it’s my turn to ask a question, I think.” Ha! Like he has been keeping track of anything but the orbit that he has formed around Minho.

Minho’s lips curve up on one end, just so. Then he’s talking again, nervous ticks out in full force. Squirming, chewing his lips,“Do you know what I think of you?” he doesn’t wait, “I think you’re cute as fuck and that you’re brilliant. You’re funny and your mind shocks me day in and day out and you always, always make me smile.”

Jisung’s head is spinning or maybe it’s the night that is spinning into the witching hour because everything is too clear and too much, too unexpected. His eyes hurt with how wide they are: skin stretched, membrane drying under the fan.

“There’s more but I like you so much,” Minho says it like a prayer, all reverent and bowed, “and I want to kiss you.” A pause. Jisung’s soul swells to heaven because his mortal body refuses to contain him. Otherwise why would he feel everything in this room, every little disturbance from the fluttering curtain to the way his legs cramp and the way his consciousness has narrowed to: Minho hyung? “I want to kiss you now.”

The chains have loosened and disintegrated and their sharp ends and rusted edges scrape at his throat, at his words, at his face that is bunching and pulling, telegraphing naked want, “Yes, yes, please.”

Then he’s kissing Minho, his back aching because he’s stretching to cover the distance and Minho’s hand is a heavy weight on his shoulders. Jisung is clutching his shirt a bit too tight, his fingers are aching. The gummy smell of Minho’s night cream fogs his brain. Minho pulls away laughing.

“Sorry, sorry!” he says, pulling away. “I just, you’re so cute.”

He doesn’t want all this talk. There’s plenty of time afterwards to talk and talking with Minho is one of his favourite things in the world. He ignores the way his heart leaps, drags himself forward, plants himself too close to Minho. He’s so soft, so open and now Jisung knows the way his lips feel and he wants more, more of a taste. But first, he needs to kick away the remnants of the chains and the ironclad mechanism which probably never existed in the first place anyway.

“I like you too, hyung,” he murmurs and Minho hears him with his entire face, eyes softening, and lips quirking, and his cheeks flushing. The fan hears him and so does the night. The spotlight fades and the night recedes as he leans up and finds Minho’s lips.

**Finish.**

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it! I would love to hear your thoughts and comments <3
> 
> Hit me up on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/trip_the_zipp) or   
> [curious cat](https://curiouscat.qa/trip_the_zipp)


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